had returned home. One day, he said, the youth informed him that he had
heard from his father, who had given up all idea of establishing him in
Paris, having arranged an advantageous marriage for him near home; and he
had taken his twelve thousand livres, for which Derues produced a
receipt, and started on his return journey.

One evening, when nearly dark, Derues had gone out with his guest, who
complained of headache and internal pains. Where did they go? No one
knew; but Denies only returned at daybreak, alone, weary and exhausted,
and the young man was never again heard of.

One of his apprentices was the constant object of reproof. The boy was
accused of negligence, wasting his time, of spending three hours over a
task which might have been done in less than one. When Derues had
convinced the father, a Parisian bourgeois, that his son was a bad boy
and a good-for-nothing, he came to this man one day in a state of wild
excitement.

"Your son," he said, "ran away yesterday with six hundred livres, with
which I had to meet a bill to-day. He knew where I kept this money, and
has taken it."

He threatened to go before a magistrate and denounce the thief, and was
only appeased by being paid the sum he claimed to have lost. But he had
gone out with the lad the evening before, and returned alone in the early
hours of the morning.

However, the veil which concealed the truth was becoming more and more
transparent every day. Three bankruptcies had diminished the
consideration he enjoyed, and people began to listen to complaints and